10 Tips to Boost Your Social Media Presence

As a business owner you know the power of a well-designed website, but like most people you may be confused about social media. I mean your kids are on Facebook all the time and they Tweet till all hours of the night – but you are not sure how social media fits in with your business and marketing plan.

Well worry no more – as part one of our three part social media series, here are 10 tips to boost your social media networks and ramp up your business returns:

Understand your clients: Posting on social media needs to be targeted to your customers. Who are they? And what are they interested in? The reason you are using social media is to increase your brand awareness so make sure that what you post or tweet includes your keywords and is relevant to your business.

Frequency of posting: For Facebook you should post at least daily and post at times people use Facebook – outside of working hours – which means lunchtimes, evenings and weekends. Three tools that will help you manage your social media and determine the best times to share are SumAll, SocialReport and Google Analytics.

Share buttons: There is no point in having a great website and awesome blog if people cannot share your content. So make it easy for them to Like or Share your content by including social media buttons on your website pages.

Instruct them: If you want your customers to share, like or Tweet your content – tell them. Ask them to share your content by clicking the Like button – you will be amazed at how many people do that – and the more your content is shared the more potential leads and customers you will generate.

Include images: Posts that include images or photos receive far more engagement on both Facebook and Twitter than straight text posts (it is possible to include images on Twitter even though you are limited to 140 characters).

Get into blogging: If you don’t already write a blog this is something that you need to seriously consider. Research has shown that businesses that post blogs 15 or more times each month have five times the amount of traffic compared to businesses that do not post blogs.

Network your social media: Don’t just stay with Facebook or Twitter – use as many of the social media forms as you can. If you do this, you can provide links to your other sites and increase customer engagement – think Pinterest, Tumblr or Yelp – but there are lots more you can investigate.

Promote other businesses: Now this might sounds insane but promoting other businesses that compliment your business, increases customer engagement, raises your credibility and helps you network with other businesses – all of which can help increase traffic and sales.

Join social media groups: By doing this you interact with potential customers. Do not blatantly advertise your products or services but engage them in topics of interest and answer their questions. Interacting with people in this way builds your reputation.

Great SEO: The more you share your content across the social media networks and the more your content is shared by interested customers – the more Google pays attention to your business. And increasing your ranking is a great boost to your business!

Please like our Facebook page for more useful ways to promote your business.